BCRA NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2024
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In this newsletter
• Hidden Earth
• The 2024 BCRA Cave & Karst Science Symposium final update
• Interactive Cave Monitoring Workshop
• Caves and Karst 51(2)
• CREG Journal(127)
• BCRA AGM
• BCRA Annual Review
• CSTRF grants
• Next Council Meeting
• Supporting BCRA
Hidden Earth A huge thanks to Les Williams and his team of volunteers for a highly successful Hidden Earth Conference with as usual a wide variety of lectures and activities. There were lectures featuring caves and explorations across the world as well as competitions and trade stalls for anyone interested in underground exploration. Watch out for Hidden Earth 2025!
Final Update on the 2024 BCRA Cave & Karst Science Symposium and AGM which will take place on Sat 12 Oct, 09:30 to 17:00 at Northumbria University
The second circular for the BCRA Science Symposium is now available and can be found on the BCRA forum Announcments on this page . The second circular includes further details about the programme and schedule for the event, locations and details about the monitoring workshop.
The call for abstracts has now closed. However, we can offer additional spaces for poster presentations. Any last-minute poster presentation requests should be sent to Chloe Snowling.
Registration for the event and workshop is still open, see details on how to register in the circular.
The symposium will be hosted by Chloe Snowling and Prof. Mike Rogerson at the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. This year we are excited to announce our keynote speaker, BCRA alumna and British cave explorer Prof. Gina Moseley.
Interactive monitoring workshop on Sunday 13th October instead of a field trip
Environmental monitoring is crucial for determining how the natural environment works, and how it responds to outside forces like climate. Cave and karst environments need monitoring like everywhere else but pose both specific challenges and specific opportunities. For instance, the lack of surface runoff makes monitoring biogeochemical processes on the landscape a headache, but the abundance of human-accessible underground space provides unique opportunities to observe groundwater infiltrating the vadose zone in a way that can only be inferred elsewhere.
Cave and karst monitoring is continuously developing technologically and methodologically, but a standard "play book" is beginning to emerge. This standard set of approaches is built on monitoring the ventilation of cave chambers / passages using temperature probes, sometimes combined with CO2 and / or radon monitors and the movement of water via drip counters and water level monitoring. Air flow speed / direction, humidity, water conductivity and pH and a range of additional specialist monitors exist for specialist deployments. For other needs, autosamplers are available which can take and store physical samples for analysis following a pre-set time step.
This workshop will introduce the most common monitoring approaches of the standard playbook, including monitoring strategy and design, logger placement and initialisation, data recovery and initial analysis.
Delegates should register their intention to attend to Mike Rogerson (Michael.rogerson@northumbria.ac.uk). Please bring a laptop and a survey of the cave or karst area you are interested in monitoring. If you are unable to bring a laptop, let Mike know.
Caves and Karst51(2) Should now be with you . If you have not received your copy, then please let the secretary know .
It is also available to download on the BCRA website .https://bcra.org.uk/pub/candks/covers.html
CREG Journal (12)Should also be with you if you are a subscriber . If you have not received your copy, then please let the secretary know . It is also available to download from the BCRA website
https://bcra.org.uk/pub/cregj/covers.html
The 2024 Annual General Meeting of the BCRA will take place at the end of the morning session on the 12th of October. Motions to be proposed at the AGM and Nominations for Officers and Members of Council should be submitted prior to the meeting (by the end of September ), with the full agenda published three weeks prior to the meeting. For further details on deadlines and the agenda please visit https://bcra.org.uk/agm/2024/index.html
The BCRA Review for 2023 should be available sometime in October. We
ship a free copy of this to member clubs that take C&KS on paper. If you
would like your own individual copy, please order this at
bcra.org.uk/bookshop/order.html
Cave Science and Technology Research Fund Grants
Further information and how to apply is available at the following link on the BCRA website https://bcra.org.uk/researchfund/
The next council meeting will be held on Wednesday 13th November via zoom 20.00 to 21.30 Further information is available on the BCRA website
Supporting BCRA.
Members will note that there has been a lack of field meetings since the end of Covid restrictions and we encourage anyone willing to organise a meeting to contact the secretary. Further information regarding supporting BCRA is available at the following link https://bcra.org.uk/volunteer/index.html
IT Support
We would also welcome support from members who have experience with IT / web services. The IT team have also identified tasks that could be undertaken by anyone with basic skills, and which would ease the load. If you feel that you can assist, please contact the secretary: bcra-secretary@bcra.org.uk
The next newsletter will be at the end of October 2024
BCRA NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2024
Moderators: David Gibson, Gina